Three Coasts

nice to see her remembered. btw your cat is awesome.
 

Octavia Butler was a genius. I never got to meet her, but I have a print on my wall of the painting done for her story "Blood Child" which was the feature story in an SF magazine (the "cover" story) and won several awards in the field. My print is signed by the artist, and I'd always hoped to someday get it signed by Octavia herself. Alas...
Science Fiction is an often maligned field because those who aren't "into it" see it only from an outsider's perspective. But those of us who are "into it" have found that an Octavia Butler or a Samuel Delaney or a Stanislaw Lem or a Harlan Ellison or a JG Ballard or a Neal Stephenson or a Connie Willis can give us far deeper insights into human nature than are possible from authors who aren't willing to "go there." Those writers, and many others, accomplish something beyond the ken of most authors, using the unknown future to fully express the known present. A writer like Octavia Butler paints on a canvas far more vast than most writers can even begin to envision.
Octavia Butler was a genius. I wish we could have more of her stories.
 

PS:
I defy anyone to find a more accurate and chilling representation of our current media than that found in Norman Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron." Outdated lingo aside, he nailed it.